Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

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The factory people were going to work next morning – the youngsters clattering over the pavement in their wooden clogs – as I left the town by the Halifax road, for Haworth, a walk of four miles, and all the way up-hill. The road runs along one side of a valley, which, when the houses are left behind, looks pretty with numerous trees and fields of grass and wheat, and a winding brook, and makes a pleasing foreground to the view of the town. The road itself is neither town nor country; the footpaths, as is not uncommon in Yorkshire, are paved nearly all the way; and houses are frequent, tenanted by weavers, with here and there a little shop displaying oaten bread. An hour of ascent and you come to a cross-road, where, turning to the right for about a furlong, you see Haworth, piled from base to summit of a steep hill, the highest point crowned by the church. The road makes a long bend in approaching the acclivity, which, if you choose, may be avoided by a cut-off; but coming as a pilgrim you will perhaps at first desire to see all. You pass a board which notifies Haworth Town, and then begins the ascent painfully steep, bounded on one side by houses, on the other – where you look into the valley – by little gardens and a line of ragged little sheds and hutches. What a wearisome hill; you will half doubt whether horses can draw a load up it. Presently we have houses on both sides, and shops with plate-glass and mahogany mouldings, contrasting strongly with the general rustic aspect, and the primitive shop of the Clogger. Some of the windows denote an expectation of visitors; the apothecary exhibits photographs of the church, the parsonage, and Mr. Brontë; and no one seems surprised at your arrival.

The Black Bull stands invitingly on the hill-top. I was ready for breakfast, and the hostess quite ready to serve; and while I ate she talked of the family who made Haworth famous. She knew them all, brother and sisters: Mr. Nicholls had preached the day before in the morning; Mr. Brontë in the afternoon. It was mostly in the afternoon that the old gentleman preached, and he delivered his sermon without a book. The people felt sorry for his bereavements; and they all liked Mr. Nicholls. She had had a good many visitors, but expected “a vast” before the summer was over.

From the inn to the churchyard is but a few paces. The church is ugly enough to have had a Puritan for architect; and there, just beyond the crowded graves, stands the parsonage, as unsmiling as the church. After I had looked at it from a distance, and around on the landscape, which, in summer dress, is not dreary, though bounded by dark moors, the sexton came and admitted me to the church. He points to the low roof, and quotes Milton, and leads you to the family pew, and shows you the corner where she – that is, Charlotte – used to sit; and against the wall, but a few feet from this corner, you see the long plain memorial stone, with its melancholy list of names. As they descend, the inscriptions crowd close together; and beneath the lowest, that which records the decease of her who wrote Jane Eyre, there remains but a narrow blank for those which are to follow.

Then the sexton, turning away to the vestry, showed me in the marriage register the signatures of Charlotte Brontë, her husband, and father; and next, his collection of photographs, with an intimation that they were for sale. When he saw that I had not the slightest inclination to become a purchaser, to have seen the place was quite enough; he said, that if I had a card to send in the old gentleman would see me. It seemed to me, I replied, that the greatest kindness a stranger could show to the venerable pastor, would be, not to intrude upon him.

On some of the pews I noticed small plates affixed, notifying that Mr. Mudbeck of Windytop Farm, or some other parishioner of somewhere else, “hath” three sittings, or four and a quarter, and so forth; and this invasion by ‘vested rights’ of the house of prayer and thanksgiving, appeared to me as the finishing touch of its unattractive features.

The sexton invited me to ascend the tower, but discovered that the key was missing; so, as I could not delay, I made a brief excursion on the moor behind the house, where heather-bloom masked the sombre hue; and then walked back to Keighley.

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Original

The factory people were going to work next morning – the youngsters clattering over the pavement in their wooden clogs – as I left the town by the Halifax road, for Haworth, a walk of four miles, and all the way up-hill. The road runs along one side of a valley, which, when the houses are left behind, looks pretty with numerous trees and fields of grass and wheat, and a winding brook, and makes a pleasing foreground to the view of the town. The road itself is neither town nor country; the footpaths, as is not uncommon in Yorkshire, are paved nearly all the way; and houses are frequent, tenanted by weavers, with here and there a little shop displaying oaten bread. An hour of ascent and you come to a cross-road, where, turning to the right for about a furlong, you see Haworth, piled from base to summit of a steep hill, the highest point crowned by the church. The road makes a long bend in approaching the acclivity, which, if you choose, may be avoided by a cut-off; but coming as a pilgrim you will perhaps at first desire to see all. You pass a board which notifies Haworth Town, and then begins the ascent painfully steep, bounded on one side by houses, on the other – where you look into the valley – by little gardens and a line of ragged little sheds and hutches. What a wearisome hill; you will half doubt whether horses can draw a load up it. Presently we have houses on both sides, and shops with plate-glass and mahogany mouldings, contrasting strongly with the general rustic aspect, and the primitive shop of the Clogger. Some of the windows denote an expectation of visitors; the apothecary exhibits photographs of the church, the parsonage, and Mr. Brontë; and no one seems surprised at your arrival.

The Black Bull stands invitingly on the hill-top. I was ready for breakfast, and the hostess quite ready to serve; and while I ate she talked of the family who made Haworth famous. She knew them all, brother and sisters: Mr. Nicholls had preached the day before in the morning; Mr. Brontë in the afternoon. It was mostly in the afternoon that the old gentleman preached, and he delivered his sermon without a book. The people felt sorry for his bereavements; and they all liked Mr. Nicholls. She had had a good many visitors, but expected “a vast” before the summer was over.

From the inn to the churchyard is but a few paces. The church is ugly enough to have had a Puritan for architect; and there, just beyond the crowded graves, stands the parsonage, as unsmiling as the church. After I had looked at it from a distance, and around on the landscape, which, in summer dress, is not dreary, though bounded by dark moors, the sexton came and admitted me to the church. He points to the low roof, and quotes Milton, and leads you to the family pew, and shows you the corner where she – that is, Charlotte – used to sit; and against the wall, but a few feet from this corner, you see the long plain memorial stone, with its melancholy list of names. As they descend, the inscriptions crowd close together; and beneath the lowest, that which records the decease of her who wrote Jane Eyre, there remains but a narrow blank for those which are to follow.

Then the sexton, turning away to the vestry, showed me in the marriage register the signatures of Charlotte Brontë, her husband, and father; and next, his collection of photographs, with an intimation that they were for sale. When he saw that I had not the slightest inclination to become a purchaser, to have seen the place was quite enough; he said, that if I had a card to send in the old gentleman would see me. It seemed to me, I replied, that the greatest kindness a stranger could show to the venerable pastor, would be, not to intrude upon him.

On some of the pews I noticed small plates affixed, notifying that Mr. Mudbeck of Windytop Farm, or some other parishioner of somewhere else, “hath” three sittings, or four and a quarter, and so forth; and this invasion by ‘vested rights’ of the house of prayer and thanksgiving, appeared to me as the finishing touch of its unattractive features.

The sexton invited me to ascend the tower, but discovered that the key was missing; so, as I could not delay, I made a brief excursion on the moor behind the house, where heather-bloom masked the sombre hue; and then walked back to Keighley.

788 words.

Tags

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• Arthur Bell Nicholls (1) ·
• Brontë Parsonage Museum (1) ·
• Brontë family (2) ·
• Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855) (12), novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters to survive into adulthood ·
• Brontë, Patrick (1777-1861) (4), Irish Anglican minister and author, curate at Dewsbury, Hartshead, Thornton, Haworth, father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë ·
• Clog (3) ·
• 📌Haworth (6), village 10 miles west of Bradford, known for the Brontës and the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway ·
• Keighley (8) ·
• Moorland (3) ·
• Photography (2) ·
• St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Haworth (1) ·
• Textile manufacturing (59) ·
• Tourism (11) ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
• White, Walter (10), writer ·
• Woollen (21) ·
• Wuthering Heights (3) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 27 April 1924: In a letter to Edmund Gosse, Clifford Allbutt recalls the Brontës
• 28 March 1692: On Easter Monday Francis Pemberton, Vicar of Bradford, sits all day in a Haworth pub, collecting his Easter dues, while Oliver Heywood preaches for next to nothing
• 27 May 1849: Scarborough on the last evening of Anne Brontë’s life, as told by Ellen Nussey
• 12 June 1810: Curate Patrick Brontë anticipates muscular Christianity and creates material for Charlotte during a Whit walk from Dewsbury to Earlsheaton
• 15 December 1846: Charlotte Brontë tells Ellen Nussey of cold, boredom and debts at Haworth
• 20 July 1858: Walter White visits Mill Gill and Whitfield Gill Force near Askrigg (Wensleydale)
• 26 July 1858: Walter White finds ancient gloom in Shipley and new hope in Titus Salt’s Saltaire
• 24 December 1777: Christmas Eve at Wuthering Heights, as told by housekeeper Nelly Dean
• 3 February 1825: The last great festival at Bradford for Bishop Blaize, the wool-combers’ patron
• 19 January 1831: Charlotte Brontë (14) starts at Roe Head School, Mirfield (Kirklees), witnessed by her later friend Mary Taylor